Grace Wilkinson

Improving Oversight of Federal Grantmaking By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and to improve the process of Federal

This is literally some of the craziest shit I have ever read.

And that's saying a lot.

www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

Graduate Program Manager - Madison, Wisconsin, United States Current Employees: If you are currently employed at any of the Universities of Wisconsin, log in to Workday to apply through the internal application process.Job Category:Academic StaffEmployment Type...

Interested in managing graduate ecology programs and supporting excellent students? Come join us in the Dept. of Integrative Biology at @uwmadscience.bsky.social Apply by August 10.
jobs.wisc.edu/jobs/graduat...

Urging researchers who are scrambling for funding and thinking that private money is The Answer to read widely and think deeply about what exactly “science-first philanthropy” is doing.

Thank you for your reporting. Can you please clarify if the intent is to only fund the 5 priority areas in each directorate? There's some confusion in the community based on the statement in the piece that directorates will remain but clusters will focus on the 5 core areas.

I'm really sorry, Tim

Don't Hesitate (poem by Mary Oliver) If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don't hesitate Give in to it There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be We are not wise, and not very often kind And much can never be redeemed Still, life has some possibility left in it Perhaps this is the way of fighting back, that sometimes, something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins Anyway, that's often the case Anyway, whatever it is, don't be afraid of it's plenty Joy is not made to be a crumb.

Check out this new #OA paper led by @dannyszydlowski.bsky.social investigating the effect of heatwaves on chlorophyll in lakes!

US based scientists are not ok.

URGENT ACTION FOR NSF GRANTEES.

For current & recent (since 2020) awards, archive your award history this afternoon/tonight. Screenshot/download/print your work in research.gov & alert your partners.

We have credible threats to integrity of awards tracking systems (via @jeremymberg.bsky.social)

Writing about this right now, just need to scream.

"Investigators wishing to expand participation in STEM for women & underrepresented groups must ensure that all outreach, recruitment, or participatory activities in NSF projects are open & available to all Americans"

www.nsf.gov/updates-on-p...

To my knowledge, POs haven’t even seen these letters. We heard only minutes before the public FAQs came out.

Hearing from sources that grant terminations are starting now, likely targeting grants aimed at broadening participation of underrepresented groups in science.... which congress explicitly asks NSF grants to do.

Statement of NSF priorities April 18, 2025 NSF priorities are grounded in the mission of the agency and modulated by statutory directives and administration priorities. NSF uses two statutory criteria to ensure that every award has the potential to advance new knowledge (Intellectual Merit) with maximum impact on the Nation and its people (Broader Impacts). NSF investments unleash groundbreaking discoveries, translational solutions and expand participation in STEM. These efforts strengthen our domestic workforce to fuel economic prosperity, national security, and global S&E competitiveness. The principles of merit, competition, equal opportunity, and excellence are the bedrock of the NSF mission. NSF continues to review all projects using Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts criteria. NSF's broadening participation activities, including activities undertaken in fulfillment of the Broader Impacts criterion, and research on broadening participation, must aim to create opportunities for all Americans everywhere. These efforts should not preference some groups at the expense of others, or directly/indirectly exclude individuals or groups. Research projects with more narrow impact limited to subgroups of people based on protected class or characteristics do not effectuate NSF priorities. NSF will continue to support research with the goal of understanding or addressing participation in STEM, in accordance with all applicable statutes and mandates, with the core goal of creating opportunities for all Americans. NSF will continue to support basic and use-inspired research in S&E fields that focus on protected characteristics when doing so is intrinsic to the research question and is aligned with Agency priorities.

🚨 Breaking: The NSF director just announced how the agency and DOGE intends to terminate active grants:

"Research projects with more narrow impact limited to subgroups of people based on protected class or characteristics do not effectuate NSF priorities."

www.nsf.gov/updates-on-p...

It is really bothering me (understatement) that the message is “bring back that one innocent guy” and not “WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK SHUT DOWN THIS WHOLE OPERATION IMMEDIATELY.”

Judge says UW-Madison international student with terminated visa can't be deported for now A federal judge barred the government from taking any action against a University of Wisconsin-Madison engineering student from India.

Tiny bit of good news out of Wisconsin

Again, that Musk/DOGE penetrated this deep into the government this quickly is the most damning indictment of supposed American norms and guardrails imaginable. These are fuckin pirates; unelected, unappointed, unqualified marauders. A functional country would have laughed them out of the building.

Trump seeks to end climate research at premier U.S. climate agency White House aims to end NOAA’s research office; NASA also targeted

BREAKING from @science.org: The Trump admin is seeking to kill nearly all climate research at NOAA, its climate science agency.

Its near-final budget proposal would end all NOAA research labs, academic institutes, and regional climate centers. And it wants to fully end the NOAA Research division.

it's wild that today ICE was just like, "we're the thought police" unironically

One sign that we are living under an authoritarian regime is that a lot of people are acting like they are living under an authoritarian regime.

1. Stop assuming people announce all their activism on social media.

2. Stop demanding people announce all their activism on social media.

3. Stop deriding people for not announcing all their activism on social media.

4. Dunking on people on social media isn't activism and isn't praxis.

Friends, I know you're excited to try protesting, but under no circumstances should you ever sign up to attend one. I'm suspicious of any org asking people to put their name on a list that is easily accessible via warrant or may even be public. You can just show up day of.

One important thing to understand about Wisconsin is that our local oligarchs (the Uehleins, Hendricks, and others) have been pouring money into state elections for years and this was a big loss for them too. Another important thing is that this election would have been critical even if...

Ugly crying that my civil liberties will be maintained (at the state level...) for the next 3 years.

You all are excited about the decisive middle finger WI delivered to Musk and Trump. I'm excited that we have a fighting chance at abortion rights, affordable care, gun control, unionizing...

There is an impulse in moments like this to appeal to self-interest. To say: These horrors you are allowing to happen, they will come to your doorstep one day; to repeat the famous phrase about who they came for first and who they'll come for next. But this appeal cannot, in matter of fact, work. If the people well served by a system that condones such butchery ever truly believed the same butchery could one day be inflicted on them, they'd tear the system down tomorrow. And anyway, by the time such a thing happens, the rest of us will already be dead. No, there is no terrible thing coming for you in some distant future, but know that a terrible thing is happening to you now. You are being asked to kill off a part of you that would otherwise scream in opposition to injustice. You are being asked to dismantle the machinery of a functioning conscience. Who cares if diplomatic expediency prefers you shrug away the sight of dismembered children? Who cares if great distance from the bloodstained middle allows obliviousness. Forget pity, forget even the dead if you must, but at least fight against the theft of your soul.

One of many moments in Omar El Akkad’s new book, “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This,” that will stop you in your tracks.

I sincerely think that universities should suspend their productivity standards for scientists and ask them instead to hold town halls in schools, public libraries, museums, shopping malls, and anywhere else and communicate what is being lost with the collapse of the research ecosystem.

A screenshot of text: Braverman said she had no idea about the Ugly Dogs’ fundraising efforts until she reached Anvik on March 10, about 512 miles into the race. A volunteer told her the Ugly Dogs had raised roughly $40,000 for Alaska schools by that point. “My jaw just dropped,” Braverman said in an interview Tuesday. “I had just done this incredibly hard run and I was about to keep going and I just happy cried all the way to the next checkpoint.” At that next checkpoint, in Grayling, Dunton was waiting. The teacher said she ran over to Braverman and hugged her. “I said, 'Thank you, thank you, thank you,’” Dunton said. About the Igivearod, she said: "It’s pretty darn wonderful.” <a quoted tweet>: A few hundred miles into the race, teachers started hugging me in villages. “We haven’t been able to buy new glue sticks in six months, but now my classroom will have a garden and a project to get girls into engineering!” one woman told me. I happy cried all the way up the Yukon. https://t.co/q3jggsswpF — Blair Braverman (@BlairBraverman) March 17, 2019

Sidenote, because I love this story: #igivearod was started by #uglydogs, fans of musher @blairbraverman.bsky.social. She was racing across the Alaska interior and had no idea people were raising money while anxiously following her progress. When word filtered back to her it was pretty damn great.

A still from the TV show the good place captioned "The Titanic is sinking, and they're writing a strongly worded letter to the iceberg"

My understanding of the Democratic Party

Two of my grad students have recently received reviews on papers submitted to society journals. In both instances the reviews are exceptional-fair, critical, and with the intent to help us improve the paper.

I'm thankful for the editors and reviewers that make our society journals excellent

Congratulations to Mike ! A true leader.